Alexis Madson, “Help Seeking Among Students: Barriers that Prevent Undergraduates from Getting Mental Health Support”
Mentor: Sarah Riforgiate, Communication
Depression is a rising issue among college students. There are a multitude of negative short-term and long-term effects when one’s mental health has declined, making it important to seek assistance for mental health challenges. Further, being a college student requires an active, healthy mind. However, many students who need assistance are not seeking the help they need to stay afloat. Self or societal stigma often prevents a person who needs assistance with mental health concerns (e.g., depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc.) from seeking out assistance. Therefore, it is important to study how college students communicate about their mental health, seek mental health support, and the barriers that prevent them from asking for assistance. For this qualitative study I will interview undergraduate students who self-identify as having a mental health condition and volunteer for the study. The interviews will focus on what kinds of mental health help they seek, how they go about seeking it, what sort of barriers stop them from seeking assistance, and what support they received in return. I will then complete a thematic analysis and discuss the study findings. This study will further the understanding about college student help seeking communication behaviors for mental health issues and provide suggestions to students to access mental health resources. The findings will also help organizations to better support students. With the results of the study, I hope to find more ways students can be supported, as well as encouraged to get help when they need it.
I am impressed by the great research you are drawing on to create this study. I am excited to see what results you find. Learning about help seeking barriers and behaviors could help college students with a wide range of concerns and be something we could teach in our classes. Great work.
Thank you for your encouraging words, Professor Riforgiate. I am also very excited to see what the results find. Through the research findings, I hope to discover better ways to support students during difficult times, then employ those strategies found within the campus community to ensure students can get the help they need. Thank you again for your comment!
Hi everyone! My name is Alexis and I am the researcher for this study. I am an undergraduate student at UWM studying Communication. I am thrilled to have an outlet to share my research with the community through the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Although the results of the study are not yet finalized, I have learned so much through my experience conducting research, and feel so fortunate to take this knowledge into the future when applying to graduate schools and job searching. I am passionate about mental health and I hope my research contributes to the larger body of this important topic. Thank you for watching my presentation and I look forward to any comments and/or feedback you may have.
Hi Alexis! This project is very important to myself and also relates to the research I’m working on in the field of architecture. I’m part of a research team, Phase III at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. We’ve been working on finding new ways to incorporate compassion within architectural design and the field of architecture (education, workplace, colleagues, etc.). We hope to explore potential solutions to combat the significant mental health strains that architecture students face by creating available and accessible resources within our department. It would be really awesome to collaborate sometime and have a discussion about mental health and students! This work is so important.
Hi Jessie! Your research sounds really interesting. I would love to have a conversation with you to swap ideas. Please let me know what mode of communication works best for you and I will make it work. Thank you for reaching out!
Thank you for an interesting presentation covering the background of your project. The research sounds like it has the potential to have some timely real-world effects on improving access to help by students who need it. Recognizing that help is needed is not the same as actually seeking it. Are you planning to analyze results via different demographic categories (e.g., women vs. men)? Best of luck with the project.
Hi Emily! Thank you for your comment. You’re right. The recognition of needing help could be an entirely different study. To address your question, while I do ask participants their demographics, it is not the focal of my analysis as I am focusing on undergraduate students as whole. With that being said, I hypothesis that the male and female participants will have different answers and I plan to look at that closer when I continue the study in Fall. Thank you again for your support.
Hi Alexis,
You did a wonderful job on the presentation. This is such an important topic. I can’t wait to find out your results.
I’m curious why you chose a qualitative interview design for the study? Instead of say an anonymous survey?
I love the connection made above by Jessie! I think I’m understanding her point about “finding new ways to incorporate compassion within architectural design.” Context matters when it comes to interactions and experiences. I’m wondering if you might ask participants about this (e.g., how might their mental healthcare seeking behavior be influenced by the spaces available for mental healthcare). Thoughts?
Hi Erin! Thank you so much for your kind words. I grappled with the idea of having the study’s design be an anonymous survey, but both my faculty mentor and I agreed that we liked the interview design because it allowed participants to elaborate on open-ended questions in a way they otherwise couldn’t. I also think how we interact with architecture is a really impactful thing that is often overlooked. I think your point about asking participants about the “spaces” they see mental healthcare providers in is really fascinating and worth investigating. I will keep this in mind moving forward with the study. Thank you for your input!